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"If you're going to panic, do it fast and beat the crowd." ~ Jesse Livermore

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

We Are All Threatened by Contagion

'We Are All Threatened by Contagion'
Spiegel Online
In an interview with SPIEGEL, Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager calls on the German government to remain firm in its opposition to euro bonds. He also warns that even the fiscally solid nations of the euro zone will get into trouble if they keep ...

EU split widens on financial crisis solutions
Sunday Business Post
Horst Seehofer, head of the CSU party - the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's CDU - said he opposes issuing common euro bonds, in an interview with the Wirtschafts Woche magazine. Meanwhile the CDU's other government partner, the Free Democratic Party ...

Intesa Funding Not Affected by Italy Debt Contagion, CEO Says
Bloomberg
“Lending to families and companies has gone better in Italy than in the euro region in the second quarter. We are prepared for difficult moments. That's why we did a capital increase.” Shares of Intesa, one of the biggest holders of Italian government ...

Pitchfork shows Aussie's rise may be in for a pause
Sydney Morning Herald
THE dollar has been on a stellar trajectory since the global financial crisis hit in 2008. Back then it sank to about US63¢ as financial markets gyrated and credit markets froze. But as the dust settled and Australia, with its booming resource sector ...

Women, wrestling and the global financial crisis.
Sydney Morning Herald
At first blush it feels like a small tale, yet it is arguably the best and certainly the most refined cinematic comment on the global financial crisis to date. "I was very interested with small town morality. I think with what's going on – with the ...

Systemic Risk Posed By Banks Has Added Sovereign Debt Dimension
Wall Street Journal... nervous about a second financial crisis. The cost of protecting against both banks and governments defaulting on their loans is rising steadily in the credit default swap market--an indicator that investors have linked the two in their minds. ...

Euro vs. Dollar: Sideways, But for How Long?
Elliott Wave
By Vadim Pokhlebkin Every time a new wave of the financial crisis thunders over us, it restarts the debate about which of the world currencies is "the safest." Right now is no exception. So far the Swiss franc has emerged as a clear leader, ...

Eurozone Crackup
CounterPunch
Regulators are seeking to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, when the global financial system began to seize up. This time the worry is that the euro-zone debt crisis could eventually hinder the ability of European banks to fund loans and ...

The Secret to Crisis Currency Investing
Forex Market
In July of 1997, the world saw the beginning of what would become a famous financial contagion, the Asian financial crisis. It started inThailand, where a sudden crisis of confidence caused the collapse of the local currency, the Thai baht. ...

All aboard for Asia's bumpy decade ahead
Sydney Morning Herald
As investors ponder a re-run of the GFC, Reserve Bank officials were last week warned of the potential for another AFC - Asian financial crisis. Distinguished Peking University economists, Yiping Huang and Bijun Wang, presented a paper at the bank's ...

OECD Countries' Growth Slows in Second Quarter
CNBC.com
The future of the euro zone is increasingly concerning investors as Germany and France, the two biggest countries in the single currency, have not announced additional economic measures to deal with potential contagion from struggling peripheral ...

Exclusive: Goldman CEO hires high-profile attorney
Reuters
The move to retain Weingarten comes as investigations of Goldman and its role in the 2007-2009 financial crisis continue. The US Securities and Exchange Commission scored a $550 million settlement against the bank in a fraud lawsuit in July 2010, ...

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Loans from Fed
Bloomberg
The result is a timeline illustrating how the credit crisis rolled from one bank to another as financial contagion spread. Fed borrowings by Societe Generale (GLE), France's second-biggest bank, peaked at $17.4 billion in May 2008, four months after ...

Gold futures soar as stocks recover some ground. That's odd. Or is it?
Christian Science Monitor
Its price could fall sharply if the worries recede about a new recession, a financial crisis in Europe, or inflation fueled by lax monetary policies. At the same time, betting against the precious metal hasn't been a good move since 2008 ushered in an ...

Euro debt crisis watch update
FXstreet.com
by Lars Rasmussen - Danske Bank A/S | View company's profile This monitor was introduced in the spring of 2010 to watch developments in local and global financial markets to keep track of thecontagion from the European debt crisis. ...

Barofsky Says Fed's Secret Loans Needed More Oversight
Washington Post
22 (Bloomberg) -- Neil Barofsky, former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor, talks about the Federal Reserve's emergency loans during the financial crisis. ...

Fed Data From 29000 Pages Show Banks' Bailout: Methodology
San Francisco Chronicle
22 (Bloomberg) -- To rank companies by how much they borrowed from the US Federal Reserve during the financial crisis, Bloomberg News examined data the central bank was forced to release about seven programs. The data were extracted from 29000 pages of ...

This Market Seems Way Too Fearful
Seeking Alpha
The money that the PIIGS have borrowed has been spent and much of that spending was wasteful; those losses happened long ago and they are now water under the bridge. What remains to be seen is whether the consequences of those losses (which might be ...

What Would Put An End To The Gold Bull Market?
Seeking Alpha
A Shift to Strong Dollar Policy in the US The gold rally began back in January 2002, which was simultaneous with US policy makers adopting a weak dollar policy. And the rapid acceleration in the gold price since the financial crisis has been supported ...

TALEB: Moral Hazard For Banks Has Never Been Greater
Business Insider
Nassim Taleb who has long been critical of Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, Tim Geithner and a Fed Policy that couldn't predict the financial crisis, or address it, has once again lashed out at banks and the The Fed. In an interview with BBC, ...

Student Debt Rising, Blacks Hit Hardest
News One
Will outstanding student loan debt be the next financial crisis in America? According to the US Department of Education outstanding student loans are a staggering $805 billion as of March, and approximately 35 million people have outstanding federal ...

Accounting Failure
Boston Review
(July 30, 2002) / Wikimedia Commons President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) on July 21, 2010, almost two years after the failure of Lehman Brothers precipitated a worldwide financial crisis. ...

Soros: Why Financial Markets Can Predict the Future
CNBC.com
In that interview, Soros also pins the European financial crisis squarely on the back of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. SPIEGEL: Is the current crisis even worse than the one in 2008? Soros: This crisis is still the continuation of the same crisis. ...

Should You Own ETNs?
ETFguide
Beyond the USstock market's (NYSEArca: VTI) daily moves, Europe's financial crisis has subtle domestic implications. The US ETN marketplace is heavily composed of products issued by European banks. Furthermore, it would be safe to say that European ...

Memories of 2008 Spooking Investors
CNBC.com
The fall of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 triggered the last financial crisis. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, will address policymakers and academics Friday after a key meeting at Jackson Hole. Last year, he used the speech as an ...

CITY FOCUS: Swiss recession fear over surge in value of the franc
This is Money
Since the financial crisis, the franc has risen 40pc. It is up 10.5pc against the eurothis year, 11.8pc against the pound, and 18.9pc against the US dollar. However, it has fallen in recent days after intervention from the Swiss National Bank and ...

This Time, Target-Date Funds Do Better
MarketWatch...default choice for retirement plans that automatically enroll employees. After the 2008 financial crisis, target-date funds came under scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers, in part due to heavy losses sustained by investors in or near retirement. ...

Bernanke Speech Is Looking Like a Lose-Lose Situation
CNBC.com
Whether that will be enough to assuage the market's thirst for even more of the unprecedented intervention that has taken place since the financial crisis is an open question. Wall Street, though, seemed to be sending a signal Monday. ...